In the novel, “A Long Way Gone,” Ishmael Beah suffers from PTSD due to the exposure to war at such a young age and the rehabilitation process. Ishmael was exposed to guns, drugs and other types of violent acts due to the war at the age of 12. As time went by, Ishmael lost his family and slowly his friends too. Ishmael was traumatized from all the violence he experienced due to the war approaching his village. He had been forced by the Sierra Leone Armed Forces to serve as a child soldier during a civil war and “It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it.”(Beah,239). The child soldiers “ undressed the prisoners and tied them”(120) up, which led to Ishmael feeling guilty and hopeless in the future. Ishmael started “smoking marijuana …show more content…
Rehab had other child soldiers but not all of them were like Ishmael, some were from the rebels' side. Ishmael’s hate for the rebels was strong, once he shot them on their feet and watched them suffer for an entire day before finally shooting them in the head.”(192). While they fought, “someone came from behind me and sliced my hand with his knife. It was a rebel boy”(164) and Ishmael was beyond reason and wanted the rebels dead. Ishmael and other soldiers weren’t normal boys and “a change of environment wouldn’t immediately make us normal boys.”(164). The withdrawal period was very tough, Ishmael “craved cocaine and marijuana so badly”(167) that he had started to fight for no reason. Ishmael and his friends “beat up people from the neighborhood”(168) and sometimes even “threw stones at them.”(168). Ever since the war, Ishmael had lost his innocence and though he was in rehab, he was getting worse before getting better. The child soldiers have been ruthless and hate the civilians, who have no idea how bad the war has been and though innocent, the boys “kicked him relentlessly and left him lying on the floor bleeding and unconscious.”(169). Though rehab was a terrible process, it was necessary for Ishmael to recover because Ishmael had suffered more than enough trauma for one lifetime and Ishmael had to be taught by the nurses and staff at the
Ishmael and his friends start getting into bad things. They start getting into drugs and other substances known as “brown brown” a deadly type of drug. In the story it says brown brown is “cocaine mixed with gunpowder” (page121). They soon start getting bad off and the government releases him at the age of sixteen. While he was in the army he soon realizes all the bad stuff he has done to people and all the bad chemicals he has put into his body and said he would never forget himself for what he has done.
As Ishmael Beah becomes accustomed to the cruel life during war in Sierra Leone, Ishmael learns that ensuring trust within the companions he meets on the battlefield keeps him “human” throughout the duration of the war against the rebels, as is displayed in A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. After Ishmael and his brother, Junior escape from a village Junior whispers quietly, “I do not think that this madness will last ... he looked at me as if to assure me that we would soon go home” (Beah 15).
In the memoir A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael undergoes an extreme maturity with the rapid overcome of the war as he is but a young child. At only 12 years old, Ishmael has experienced events that some people in this world will never have to experience in their lifetime. As the generals use vicious tactics
"A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah, has permanently altered my understanding of "Civil War". Due to the way Ishmael Beah talked about his own near death experiences, children who read his book can now have knowledge of war, from a child's perspective. The absurd savagery Ishmael was exposed to, taught him lessons a child like myself should never have to learn. Reading this book has brought light of the many intentional and unintentional consequences of war. Ishmael had been born in Mogwemo, a poor segregated village, like most of the regions in Sierra Leone.
In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Beah decides to write about his time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone. When he made the decision to publish his story, Beah was trying to tell three main messages to his readers. He was first attempting to get the message out to the world that conflict in Sierra Leone was a serious issue, given that at the time that he wrote his book, most Americans couldn’t even locate Sierra Leone on a map; he also tried to show how human nature can cause people to do uncharacteristically terrible things in desperate situations. Finally, Beah was also trying to portray the message that despite the immense, grief, guilt, anger, and pain that people can feel after being affected by a violent situation, a person can always be healed, if enough work is put into helping them, no matter how damaged that
In the text, Ishmael is faced with having to fight in the war starting at only 12 years old. Along the way, he finds other boys the same age as him or even younger. Ishmael faces the struggle of losing his family and his sense of safety in the war. Ishmael lost many things whilst being in a war, one of which being his family.
The 6-year war in Sierra Leone captured 10,000 to 14,000 child soldiers and left them displaced after the war with no family and no childhood left. A long way gone by Ishmael Beah gives us a unique perspective of what child soldiers have to go through and what they have survived. Resourcefulness was one of the various skills that Ishmael used to survive well being part of the Sierra Leone war. Ishmael's resourcefulness helped him in many ways to survive well in war. The first piece of evidence that supports that Ishmael is resourceful is, "I learned about this grass during one of the summers when I visited my grandmother.
Most people assume that their lives are constant from day to day, the same routine goes to school or work, some afternoon activities and so on. But what most of us don’t imagine is that we are so close to the edge, tragedies that seem foreign to us appear from nowhere and turn our lives upside down. In long way gone, a story of a child soldier named Ishmael Beah, many tragedies, events has bestowed upon him, and he to choose to die or survive. These tragedies have transformed him from innocent child to ruthless child soldier to rehabilitate adult with the scars of war that destroyed his country.
War is a terrifying occurrence to be a part of but for most people, it is not part of their daily lives, and only know of it from history books and movies; But in Some countries, war is a part of people's daily lives. In his nonfiction memoir, Ishmael Beah develops his purpose to educate people on how war is not as cool as it seems through the use of being numb to emotion and drugs. Numbness to emotion is prominent in the novel. Ishmael has become a child soldier for the government and is now getting ready to kill a prisoner they captured. Ishmael writes, “The corporal gave the signal with a pistol shot and [he] [grabs] the man's head and slit his throat…” “...
This army that he is in becomes totally addicted and brainwashed, they do lots of drugs and believe the only way to avenge their family's deaths is kill the other side. These drugs they used were marijuana, cocaine and “brown brown”, which all “helped them” have the courage they needed to fight in war. Ishmael was a soldier for a while before he was then given to UNICEF, or United Nations Children's Fund, which then brought him to a rehabilitation center. Ishmael has lots of troubles when it comes to recognizing and accepting his past, or being able to conceptualize what the future might look like. He meets a nurse Etser at this rehabilitation center, which allows him to open paths, accept and forgive what he has done within the past, and have a better understanding of his
One day he was fighting for fun and stealing to survive. Next he was expected to talk about his feelings and make new friends. During their first months in rehabilitation, Ishmael and other boys were constantly in fights. He struggled to adjust to the real world and normal human interaction, after he was a child soldier for two years of living a horrible
“There were more than thirty boys there, two of whom, Sheku and Josiah, were seven and eleven years old” (Beah 109). These were babies fighting for their lives, being dosed up with all kinds of drugs. Even Ishmael, he was recruited at the age of 13. Not only did this war affect child soldiers but the other kids that had no protection. “One of the main aims of the rebels, when they took over a town, was to force civilians to stay with them, especially women and children”( Beah 24).
In the memoir A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, Beah writes about his childhood to teen years being an unwilling child soldier in Sierra Leone and living through times of great tragedy and war. Ishmael was born in Sierra Leone in 1980 and he moved to the United States in 1998 where he finished high school at the United Nations International School in New York. Ishmael went to Oberlin College. He is also a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Watch Rights Division Advisory Committee. He has spoken in front of the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO), and many other NGO panels on how children are affected by war.
Ishmael says, “I wasn’t sure whether he was unconscious or dead. I didn’t care” (Beah 135). Ishmael is no longer in the war, yet the violence and numbness to it continues. The hell from war made its way into a normal life for Ishmael. He will never be the same Ishmael from before the war.
In the book, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael becomes a child soldier at the age of 12 for the governmental team the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, in order to fight the Revolutionary United Front. Ishmael goes from being a regular kid who liked to spend time with his friends